Developers are always searching for simple data stores to use with their applications. In web-based systems (e.g. web applications) this has meant that robust systems used various forms of structured query language (SQL) databases, spreadsheets, or simple text files. SQL databases while powerful can have high costs and complexity while the other data stores often run into scalability and performance issues. To communicate with these data stores simple object access protocol (SOAP), extensible markup language (XML), JavaScript Object Notation Notion (JSON) or the like can be used. JSON is a data-interchange format like XML that is designed for easy readability. JSON is language independent and has two main structures. The first structure is a collection of name/value pairs such as an object or record. The second structure is an ordered list of values such as an array or list.
Single-table databases are a common data construct used in a variety of web-based systems such as workflow systems. For these single-table systems, much of the time is involves operations such as manipulation of one row of data at a time or displaying dashboards of data rows. In a SQL database, either of these operations can involve multiple query execution and data manipulation. In contrast, a JSON data store handles these operations quickly and with little overhead.